It’s not exactly big time news, and Riverside Village Manager Peter Scalera was a little reluctant to make a big deal out of it, but the village now has a representative on the board of Visit Oak Park, a regional tourism bureau.
While the bureau is focused mainly on bringing paying visitors to Oak Park, this is one way Riverside can do a bit more to promote the village to those living outside the borders (we’d suggest getting the broken link to the Riverside map on the Visit Oak Park website fixed, by the way).
The decades-old complaint from the Riverside business community is that local government doesn’t do enough to promote economic development. While this appointment to the Visit Oak Park board won’t exactly open the floodgates, it’s a positive sign that the village is serious in raising its profile a bit higher.
And this year is a particularly good year to begin a stronger push. The Riverside Arts Weekend and the Frederick Law Olmsted Society’s house walk are happening simultaneously in May.
That kicks off a summer that will include another July 4 5K race, tours of the village by the Olmsted Society and, of course, another summer of Brookfield Zoo patrons streaming into the neighborhood (don’t forget, part of the zoo is inside Riverside!).
Being on the board of directors of an agency planning marketing strategy for area tourism sure can’t hurt.
